Petition to keep hosting discounts on paid plans. Pricing reviewed

Let’s not forget this was a paid add-on, which is now provided free should you choose to use it. If you don’t need it, it’s not a ‘waste’.

I’m not sure what you mean, but the limit was 500 previously. What’s the complaint here?

I’m not sure what you mean, but the limit was 1 previously. What’s the complaint here?

How did you get $27 of features when CMS hosting is $16??? Did you also not read above that it’s on further discounts?

Yes sure, do they let you pay for just one month for $5, or is that $5 due to a bulk/yearly discount? Do they offer hosting as reliable and fast as Webflow? Please provide a real-world example instead of pulling numbers out of the air, so that we can make a comparison.

@samliew

I think your totally missing the point.

what I mean by waste is for e.g a website doesn’t need white label, it only needs 500 items, I only needed 1 collaborator.

So all these “extra” “free” features I would not be using, yet I would need to pay the price increase. Adding all these extra addons sound great, but whats the point if a website doesn’t use them?

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Yes I get what you mean. You’re saying this whole price increase is unfair to you. Stop and think of the value Webflow is providing. If you can host elsewhere for $5 a month with the features you need, by all means go ahead. Webflow cannot cater to and please all the designers and developers on the internet.

Sorry for being harsh, but I am very, very upset that you are comparing Webflow to a $5 service who can provide similar value. If you have one that we can compare Webflow to, I beg you to tell us who is doing better.

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@samliew

I think from this topic it is very clear that its not just me, the example I gave you above is a very reasonable issue that most people would face. Trying to sell a big feature package to a client who doesn’t need all those extra feature increases, that is the point I’m trying to make?

I’m not comparing webflow to any other web hosting provider, maybe that is how it sounded.

To me web flow is a design tool and not even close to a web hosting provider, so it is impossible to “compare” the 2. The point I was trying to make is the price increase is going to be tuff to upsell to clients because their are web hosting providers NOT design tools out there who do offer those cheap and reliable services.

If they offered file uploads, custom email accounts then yes it would be more easier to upsell to clients.

No need to apologise or get upset, I love webflow just as much as you but these points need to be raised.

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It should be kept in mind that each freelancer(designer or developer), studio or agency has to make decisions about their business model and what tools (software, hardware, processes, etc) best meet their needs and hopefully the needs of their clients. Personally, I’ve tried a number of tools and services along the way in my career – a few bad, some good but very few great. I’d put Webflow in the great category! I’ve found it a quality solution for me as a designer and for my clients. However, It comes down to if a product or service doesn’t meet the needs of you or your client(s) for you then, well it just doesn’t and you have to find something that does fit your business model.

As far as the new pricing – the pricing changes were pre announced back in mid November
(Upcoming new features and pricing changes - #36 by seank), all current sites with hosting were grandfathered in forever and a 50% discount on new sites until July 2017. That seems like more than fair notice of changes and a generous amount of time to examine your business plan and pricing to make sure Webflow works for your business model.

A few things to keep in mind about the hosting. It’s top notch, Amazon & Fastly, secure, automatic backups, it’s easy to maintain both for you and your client. No worrying about patches (plugins, WP, security) it’s all taken care of…your client isn’t met with updates or other concerns when logging in to the Editor. Compare the new Webflow prices (without discount) to managed hosting like WPEngine or GetFlyWheel and it’s very competitive. With Webflow you are getting SSL, CDN, backups, security, form processing, Tier 1 hosting, scales for traffic surges and no headaches or time managing server-side hosting. If you are comparing this type of hosting to the basic entry level Godaddy for $5 then it’s not a fair comparison.

On the pricing of Webflow hosting – before the pricing change “basic” was $5 and is now $7.50 for new sites (still $5.00 for grandfathered sites) but it now includes SSL so that’s benefit considering SSL is going to more import for rank in 2017, and if you had SSL it’s a decrease in cost as “basic” with SSL would have been $10 before. Before a “CMS site” was $10 or $15 with SSL, plus $5/per site for Editor branding, plus another $6/per collaborator, plus if you needed extra CMS items ($10) it added up quickly. The community voiced concerned about the complexity and that scaling upward increased costs. Now you can run basically the same CMS site with all the features for $40/month less. Even without the 50% discount. For existing sites and new ones until July you get all that for the same $10 without the add on fees.

One thing, I’m not sure about is how some users in the UK or other parts of the world find the pricing prohibitive but other users in those same countries seem to be building solid business with the Webflow service and hosting as their base. I wonder if it is a difference of wanting/needing to make a bigger profit margin on hosting as opposed to selling design, development, UX, and conversion strategy.

@chiefmonkey I’m positive people were paying for extra collaborators and probably for white label as well. Regardless, I think it’s about now being able to offer three collaborators without having to talk about an up charge as well as the increased number of CMS items. White label is now for every site under the account. There hasn’t been anything “deceptive” about the Webflow pricing change or @PixelGeek post …if anything this change makes pricing clear and easier. And the SSL question/pricing was covered by Webflow staff here Webflow SSL Hosting - #84 by brryant.

Hey, @Matty I’m a little confused by some of your comments because you seem to be critical of the Webflow hosting prices but then say it’s not actually hosting. You can point hosting at Webflow and let the client keep their email directed to a service like Gmail. (not sure if that is what you were talking about) Also, I don’t think GoDaddy or hostgator are going to touch the same quality, features or performance as Webflow for those cheaper rate plans. The “extras” you mention used to be add-on features but the community was asking for a simpler pricing structure that scaled better and the Webflow team responded. On existing CMS they will be $10 forever AND you get the extra features. Once they $20 per site that’s still competitive pricing.

A final note, the clients I have setup on Webflow are happy, love that we could build full custom sites without having to break the bank, have no issues with the pricing, are surprised that in a year or more we haven’t had to fix, update or tinker with things on the backend that cost them money. The clients I’ve moved from WP to Webflow and that use the Editor wonder why we didn’t do this earlier. :grinning:

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I’d try to re-raise a point about pricing which remained quite in the dark… While we could argue a lot if the new pricing is about good value for money and if it is prohibitive in some cases or not, I still cannot get the point of why should team plans be prohibitively expensive? It is undoubtedly prohibitive pricing for freelancers. And it benefits no one.

I can guess that it comes from some notion that only big studios work in teams. How could I convince Webflow that this is a plain flawed notion? Freelancers work in teams, too! Team work allows for faster deployment and freelancers need to deliver fast, too. Not only big studios! Actually, it is the big studios who can afford to be laggard. Not to mention that team plans could be a viral marketing weapon for Webflow (Pricing & Marketplace Feedback).

If team pricing was, let’s say $2 or $5 for a team member I’d have paid that. Webflow would’ve taken that money, I’d have been earning more because of this speed of development advantage and more people would have learned about Webflow as a result (my extra team members, that is). And Webflow could’ve still been keeping the current high team member price ($35) to its most expensive package.

Now I am not paying that money and I am not developing sites at the speed I wish for.

Webflow, all guys may need to work in teams. All guys may benefit from working in teams. It is not only the big studios. Do not make this stupid mistake of naming your most expensive package “I’m part of a team”. Call it “A big studio” or “Enterprise” or something like that.

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Hey mate. Nothing deceptive about the pricing, just how the team at Webflow are justifying it. I’ve always maintained that their pricing is their choice and I’m reviewing my model to make it fit but it’s a difficult conversion to AUD money when most people don’t care about those features. So it means a whole client demographic change for many Webflow designers that host clients websites.

Comparing every add-on I could possibly pay for isn’t a great justification because I and my customers don’t use every add-on. That’s my point.

I read the reply about SSL, great post and I appreciate the effort. I totally understand that making SSL available is not free only the certificates are… But that is a company problem not a customer problem (to quote the guys over at drift.com).

In the end SSL availability on Webflow brings them more customers and makes the sites they build the platform for more secure for their backend and customers front end. It’s an inevitable change that they were making a customer problem instead of an internal company problem.

Webflow seems to have changed their mind about the customer base they want to attract … Not exactly sure who that is, but it is not FreeLance Professional Website Developers …

I am dissappointed …

My customers will pay $20 a month no problem. That gives them Webflow Hosting (Fast), SSL (free - don’t know why Webflow charged for this), CMS (limited capability), Forms (very very limited).

Here’s the rub - All my customers require better:

  1. Forms Interaction and Notification routing
  2. CMS (without the many limitations in the editor)
  3. Ecommerce (for some customers, always need to go outside of Webflow)

Really makes a strong argument for going back to WP.

Wish I was mistaken … Love that designer … but, that’s it.

@rayjnorris If you need additional features that Webflow hosting doesn’t currently provide, you can always opt to just use Webflow designer for frontend development, then export and convert to Wordpress and host elsewhere like these: http://squarerooms.com.sg, http://singaporeschild.com.sg

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The fact that my company will not have to deal with all the technical debt we currently have to deal with is one of the main reasons we are moving to Webflow. Our goal is not to sell the value of Webflow as a platform, but to sell the value of how it can help them solve specific business problems. Once you start trying to sell or upsell the cms or the hosting based on price/features you are commoditizing what you are doing.

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I don’t have any issues with what the current prices are set at, I can make them work. My only let down is that I feel as though designers using the platform to pump out sites for a living (aka subscribers to the design platform) should pay less for hosting than what Webflow charges the public or the “one site” customer. The price is exactly the same for us loyal regulars as it is for someone wanting one site. I don’t mind that CMS hosting is $20/month for us, but make it $22-$25 for “outsiders”.
As I said, I can work with this pricing structure…no problem. I just want to feel valued or special as a paying platform user. That’s all. Other than that…great tool, great team behind it, great community, as usual.

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I completely agree with your virepoint that designers hosting several sites should have a discount. However, $22 or more I find too much for single sites.

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Here is a pricing structured for managed WordPress sites in Canada pricing – Canadian Managed WordPress Hosting at their basic level $24/mo covers many of the same things. I just quoted a client and their problem was the cost of hosting I can only imagine what it will be like after the price increases. I always say to my clients that Webflow is a premium hosting service but with the fluctuating dollar it’s hard to justify what the pricing will look like in the future. And I agree if I can set up a client with a small cms website and they can pay the same hosting fee as if I pay for hosting on my account that doesn’t make sense to me. From my perspective, there is the advantage to keeping the customer service going so I can easily update the site in the designer but from my customers perspective, they may not care. They have access to the editor with their direct hosting plan. Which by my calculation if they get a free hosting plan with CMS they pay $20/mo or yearly 16/mo. And if I want to turn around and charge them monthly on my plan after June I will pay 20/mo +5% for using webflow billing which will end up being more than the customer would pay by hosting with webflow directly. I know there is talk of a discount for volume hosting in the future it would just ease my mind if I had any indication of what amount of sites would have to be sustained and an idea of the discount. For us small companies and designers the profit on hosting can make a difference, rather than just going design job to design job. Maybe the old model is dead and you can’t make money on hosting anymore. I don’t know what the solution is. I guess I have to create a way for my customer to see the time savings and value in the webflow editor on my own if they want to update things themselves otherwise back to looking at WordPress, blech.

I would love to see a tiered plan based on traffic. Not sure how hosting works, but my business deals with very low traffic sites, but lots of them and I need to make money on a hosting/customer support monthly fee.

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in my opinion - a tiered plan such as this - would not work.

I export everything. I don’t use Webflow hosting.

I run my own dedicated servers…

  • so Webflow never see’s any of my traffic.

I was referring to CMS hosting plans, but now I see I did not make that point. I would like to take advantage of the CMS features for my low traffic sites.

Here are my two cents. I’m sick of Wordpress and I don’t want to deal with hosting with a third-party. I want to bring my clients to Webflow. My clients have no clue what Webflow is but I promote it to them as being a superior platform. So I don’t care if my clients know I’m using Webflow but I don’t want every website visitor or my competitors know I’m using it. Many of my clients are not going to update the website themselves. Sure, they think they want to but most of them are too busy to deal with it unless their industry requires them to be making site updates several times per month.

Since I’m bringing Webflow a monthly paying customer without you having to pay to market to them directly, it is only fair that I make a monthly residual from the account. At the same time, I can’t have my client visiting the Webflow site and see that I’m overcharging him to make money off the hosting. With client billing, I was excited that I would be able to charge $10 per month for basic hosting and make $5 minus the software and gateway fees. So you need need increase prices? Okay, right now I can use the 50% discount structure and double the cost to the client for my monthly fee.

But what am I supposed to do after July 1st? I recommend you keep the existing discount structure but keep (or even increase, if need be) the monthly software fee. It doesn’t make sense to accommodate a single site user. Keep your small design firms happy and encourage us to use your hosting service. Then we can go after all the users that are sick of Wordpress or have crappy Wix sites and you can build market share without even having to spend money to market to end users (site owners). Enterprise firms will want access to the server so Webflow is probably only useful to them for mock-ups. I think my situation would be in line with most smaller design firms. Please consider my recommendations. Thank you.

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I agree and please Webflow, I know we have better hosting but prove wise I have no idea how I am going to tell my current clients the hosting will cost $240 per year, that’s a lot! Then, I cannot even make profit from hosting.

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Agreed, I’d be fine with paying more for the software. It benefits me quite a bit. The hosting however, is teetering the edge of a hard sell for smaller clients. Mid to large businesses are fine, but 85% of my business is small clients paying me heavy for developing but cringing at high hosting. It’s tough, not impossible but definitely an inconvenient challenge.

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I just like to add that I think it is a mistake for Webflow to compete directly with Squarespace. Webflow is a professional design tool and should not be marketed directly to website owners. Do you really want to alienate your agency customers and spend thousands of dollars marketing to end users and having to significantly expand customer support? I’m not interested in selling templates.

Originally, I did not host with Webflow because I did not want per site overhead fees. It was more profitable to use a bulk hosting plan. However, with client billing, I was ready to host with Webflow to take advantage of direct publishing, increased workflow, CDN, etc. You did not allow able time between client billing being released and this price increase to see Webflow’s growth potential at your previous pricing structure.

Many of us have built our design businesses using Webflow. You should not leave your loyal community of designers this level of uncertainty of what we are suppose to do after July 1st. A temporary discount does not suffice.

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